


in this desperate, fleeting time

by loveandthetruth



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Left Behind - Freeform, Loneliness, Survivor Guilt, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 23:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12758787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/pseuds/loveandthetruth
Summary: He had spent so long trying to prepare Noct for the worst, he had never stopped to consider what his life might be like if he was the one left behind.





	in this desperate, fleeting time

It’s a long way back to Lucis.

Aranea stands at the window, expressionless. Gladio joins her after hours of broken sleep, his whole body stinging and unsteady. He frowns, glances at his watch, peers again through the window. He remembers the train, the strange, shortening days. There’s something like pity in her eyes when he manages to ask, _how long?_

She looks away over the bleak, black landscape. _Seventy-one hours._

It’s a long way back to Lucis. They sleep. They eat. They don’t speak.

\---

Lestallum is a bright flare in the dark wasteland. Gladio jumps down from the airship and stumbles, feeling like something the sea threw up on the shore, bruised and too heavy and alive. In the harsh light, the reality of the last few days presses down on him, the renewed pull of gravity, inescapable.

Cor arrives in hours, dirty and exhausted.

 _So it’s true,_ he says, looking them over while Gladio’s stomach turns. _What happened?_

When Ignis is finished telling the tale, there’s a long and ugly silence. It feels an age before Gladio can finally bring himself to look at Cor and ask, _What do we do now?_

Cor scrubs the palm of his hand over his face. He’s already walking away. _Ask me tomorrow._

\---

Gladio dreams of Gralia. He follows Ardyn out of the tower, wariness and anger knocking around inside him as they listen to his story because there’s nothing else they can do.

He wakes wanting to cut him open from neck to navel. He would do it in a heartbeat if he believed it would achieve anything, he would do it in a heartbeat even knowing that it wouldn’t.

Ardyn showed them his real face and Gladio sees it when he sleeps, when he wakes. He doesn’t blink.

\---

The first year is the hardest.

It’s not so bad to begin with. They set a day cycle of three eight-hour shifts. Sleep, leisure, work. People are quick to volunteer for something, anything, that they can do. For a while morale stays high, a strange festival-like atmosphere, but the energy runs down gently, inevitably, as the weeks turn into months and the sky stays dark.

Lestallum is hot, crowded, and stinks of sweat and misery. It’s easy to get used to it, but somehow that only makes it worse to come back, after being in the cool, wide open outside. There’s an itch in the back of his throat every time the city closes back around him and a sense of suffocating, as if someone were shovelling dirt on top of his head.

\---

Reaching for his sword feels like trying to breathe through mud but he does it. Sometimes it’s for no other reason than to remind himself that he can, to remind himself of what it means. If Noct was dead then his power, his gift of it to them, would be dead too.

Sometimes he does it for no other reason than that it hurts. He stands on the roof of the power plant, as close to the sky as he can get, pulling his greatsword out of the air and vanishing it, over and over until he falls to his knees, sweating and pale and aching in places he can’t name.

\---

Gladio keeps to himself, keeps quiet. He thinks he understands now why Cor had been so reclusive, so intent on keeping himself apart from anyone else. Gladio’s sole job had been to keep Noctis safe and now he can feel eyes on him all the time. A sworn shield without a king.

He misses his father, would give anything to speak to him again, but every thought is salt in the wound. Clarus Amicitia had died with his king. Gladiolus Amicitia had survived his.

\---

Libertus arrives out of the blue one day, a handful of refugees in tow, and Gladio’s heart soars for a moment. It feels like a lifetime ago that he had seen them last but Nyx is nowhere to be seen.

Libertus tells Gladio that he died saving Insomnia.

They talk a little that night. Mostly Gladio tries to listen through the ringing in his ears, tries not to choke on the bitterness rising in his throat.

\---

Iris has her arms around Prompto’s bare back, watching over his shoulder as he flips through a book. Gladio slips back out of the door before they notice, waits with his back to the wall until Prompto leaves, dragging a shirt over his head.

Iris takes one look at him, sees that he knows and Gladio forgets why he is there, feels the fight building between them like static electricity, both of them bristling. He doesn’t know why he cares, tries not to. It’s none of his business.

 _It’s none of your business,_ Iris says.

Gladio tries to bite his tongue, too late. _You’re only with him because you think Noctis isn’t coming back._

She sways like she’s been struck. He wants to take it back, doesn’t even know why he said it, but his jaw is clenched shut. Iris throws the book at his head, tells him to get out but he’s already ducking out of the door, slamming it behind him.

\---

One night finds him walking a hunter back to her doorstep, on the way to his own bunk. It had been a rough hunt and they’re both quiet, lost in their own heads until Gladio turns to leave. She catches him by the arm, asks him if he wants to go to bed with her. _There’s no one else in the dorm tonight_ , she says. Her mouth is curled up with feigned nonchalance, her eyes red rimmed.

Gladio plasters a smile on his face. _Why not._

\---

Gladio hears an electric buzzing from around the corner, and bursts of laughter that die down when he turns it. It happens sometimes, people falling silent when they see him. He wonders if it happens to Prompto or Ignis too, but he’s never around them enough now to find out. One of the hunters – Gladio is almost sure that he knows him, should know him – gestures to him to join them, taking turns cutting each other’s hair on the front step.

He runs a hand through the sweaty tangle of his hair. The sides were growing out awkwardly. He couldn’t recall the last time he washed it, surely not so long ago. He shrugs, lets them shave it all the way down.

He immediately regrets it.

He walks the rest of the way back to his room with the back of his neck prickling, feeling exposed, watched. He showers, can’t stop rubbing his hands over his scalp, until he rifles through their bags and finds Noct’s cap, putting it on and pulling the visor low. He sits there on the floor for a long time, thinks of all the nights he’d spent worrying about Noctis, of what might happen to him if Gladio died, if he had been left alone and unprotected. He had spent so long trying to prepare Noct for the worst, he had never stopped to consider what his life might be like if he was the one left behind.

\---

Cor finds him one night loading netted hoops into a truck. Gladio can see Cor’s boots in the reduced field of vision the cap affords him, his little shield from the rest of the world, but doesn’t look up. He checks the last of the nets, tightens the knots, lays it in the back with the others.  

_Gladio._

He hops down from the back bumper and closes the doors, head down. _I’ll be back before shift ends._

Cor doesn’t stop him, just steps back away from the van when the engine rumbles to life. Gladio feels bad, just a little. He leaves anyway.

\---

He works quickly, methodically, waist deep in the Vesperpool shallows. He hasn’t needed to lay nets like this for a long while, not with Noct around, but Gladio has never had the same finesse with a rod. Now, he doesn’t have the time or patience either. It feels good to be alone. He won’t be able to do it again like this. Collecting the catch and resetting the traps will require more hands than just his, but for now he lets himself enjoy the space.

Sinking the last trap, he hears the mewling again, sure now that he’s not just imagining it. He wades out of the water, shivering a little, pulls his hoodie back on over his damp shirt. He keeps an ear on the daemon lumbering around somewhere in the dark while he searches the shack.

She looks a mess, fur matted and dirty, but he still recognises Noct’s little friend with a taste for haute cuisine. He coaxes her out and into his pocket, trying not to think too much about it,

\---

The influx of refugees tails off sharply. It’s no surprise. Travelling outside, in the ruin of Lucis, is arduous now even for the most skilled among them. Sometimes Gladio is relieved. They can barely manage to feed the mouths they already have. It’s a relief that the refugees stopped coming before they were forced to started turning people away.

Sometimes Gladio lays awake wondering how many daemons are out there, and how many were once people looking to be saved.

\---

He walks aimlessly through the city when he can’t sleep. One night his feet take him to Ignis’s office, as much as it could be called that, in the headquarters. He almost turns around when he realises where he is heading, but. Maybe he could stick his head around the door just to see, leave without being noticed. He still forgets to account for Ignis’s newly sensitive hearing.

_Seen fit to grace us with your presence, have you?_

Gladio winces, but doesn’t have a reply. He deserves that. Ignis doesn’t look like he meant much by it anyway. There’s a pinched tightness to his face. He keeps raising his hand to head. Caffeine withdrawal, Gladio realises.

_Burned through your Ebony stash?_

_I passed it on to the hunters._ If ever regret had a voice it would be this. Gladio tries not to smile. _Their need is greater than mine._

Gladio comes back a couple of hours later with some tea – peppermint, honey, lemon. He leaves it on the table near Ignis, where he is working with Talcott. _Don’t let it get too cold._

\---

Prompto spends much of his time at Hammerhead. Gladio thinks mostly he just wants to cheer Cindy up. She does her best not to show it but they know she’s thinking of her parents, old memories coming out of their graves to haunt her in the long dark.

The Regalia had been rescued by Aranea on one of her runs. Cindy works on it lovingly and deliberately slowly, making the work last. Prompto helps too, his affinity for tech making so much more sense in light of what they learned in Gralea.

\---

Cor and Dave take up the training of volunteers. It gnaws on them that they have to do it, they leave it as long as they can, but the fact remains that it’s not getting any less dangerous. They don’t have the numbers they need to keep everyone safe and they still lose people.

They rope Gladio into helping as well, though he initially refuses. He stands resolutely at the back for the first few sessions, silent. Sometimes he catches himself slipping through the rows, correcting form, murmuring advice.

\---

The nights are long, the years are short. In some ways, things get easier.

Gladio finds himself talking a little more, smiling a little more. He still wears Noct’s cap with the visor pulled low, still trying to see less of the world, less of the mess they had made.

Sometimes he watches Cor, the way smiles pass across his face in a flicker, a candleflame disturbed by a gentle wind. Gladio wonders if he looks the same.

\---

The four of them break for dinner on the garage floor, Cindy, Prompto, Gladio and Talcott, in front of the Regalia’s stripped out chassis, the parts spread out around them. Prompto is the one to suggest that they should take some of the upgrades out to put into the hunter trucks instead. Gladio had been turning the idea over himself, at the very least the headlights would make supply runs so much safer, but he couldn’t make himself let go of the need to keep the car the way it had been when Noct last drove it.

_We could try to reverse engineer them instead?_

The three of them look at Talcott, who flushes a little, then each other. _Maybe Wedge might know how to do that,_ Gladio says.

It would be a good idea if they could make it work. There were plenty of cars around Lestallum alone that could be stripped for parts and materials. Everybody could help, would want to help, which would boost morale too. Gladio feels a warm flush of something in his chest, sitting there exchanging pleased smiles with the others, making plans. It feels like hope.

\---

There’s a list in his head of things people need, often actual requests, sometimes things he’s just overhead.

Books. Wiring and headlight bulbs. Battery packs. Radios. Tinned food, fruit, vegetables. Sometimes fresh, if they were very, very lucky. Clothes. Bedsheets. Clean drinking water.

One memorable night, he and Dave return from a two day excursion with a truck full of mattresses. People end up dragging mattresses out all over the city, onto the streets and rooftops, with the last of the good booze, to sleep together under the open air.

\---

It's easy to forget, but it’s not just Lestallum. From time to time they will visit Tenebrae and Altissia, to trade, to remind each other that they’re not alone in the darkness.

\---

His idea about using the powerplant as a smokehouse has Holly laughing, a little bubble of mirth, and she immediately hands the gate keys to him. The next time he’s at Vesperpool he brings back as much fish as he can put in the back of the van.

She helps him hang them. It takes a long time, between the fumbling in their heavy thermal suits and mocking each other about it. It’s unmistakably one of his simplest, most present nights.

\---

There isn’t a book in the whole city that he hasn’t read at least once. He turns pages, unseeing, daydreaming of returning to Insomnia, finding something untouched. He imagines going back, making new memories, cleaning himself of the grey wash of all these years.

\---

Ignis had been put up in the headquarters almost as soon as they had arrived in Lestallum, Cor putting him in charge of logistics and mission planning. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he is basically running the place so it’s a dull surprise for Gladio to find him one night on the upper balcony of the powerplant, training with Aranea.

She turns out to be a patient and impartial teacher. Gladio stays to watch from time to time, answering her invitations to join them with a noncommittal _some other time._

Gladio had managed training Noctis because they had been paired young, never having known the prince personally before then. It would be a very different experience with Ignis, a grown man who doesn’t like to ask for help, doesn’t like to show weakness. Gladio doesn’t blame him for turning to Aranea instead.

\---

Apropos of nothing, he makes a cake the night before Noctis’s twenty-fifth birthday, the most basic stovetop recipe he knows. He doesn’t really think about it, goes through the motions from memory, sits in front of it when it’s done, a taper stuck in the soft sponge for want of a candle. Had they been in Insomnia, there would have been a grand celebration, a thousand good wishes, blessings for long and full life.

He lights the taper and murmurs, _live long, brother,_ but he can’t bring himself to eat. He stays there for a long time, chin in hand, trying to remember why he thought this was a good idea. In the end he cuts it, boxes it, takes it out to where he knows the kids play sometimes. He sits on the steps while they eat, mouths full of cake and laughter.

He had forgotten his own twenty-fifth sometime three years ago.

\---

They return to Gralea with the knowledge that it is almost entirely derelict. Almost. That the city is now populated with daemons is a risk they’re willing to take, mounting a weeks long mission, looting the place for food and anything else they can carry.

Zegnatus casts a long shadow. Gladio finds himself turning to look at it often, considering the gaping hole in tower. When Gladio describes it to him, Ignis speculates that Ardyn destroyed it so he could remove the crystal.

Gladio has a hard time concentrating on the job after that, his stomach turning. Noctis taken by the crystal, the crystal taken by Ardyn. He doesn’t understand it, can’t fathom why or what it means for Noct, for any of them. He can’t help turning it over in his head anyway, feeling like the tower looks; massive and gutted and empty. Useless.

\---

Gladio returns from a shift to find Gentiana sitting on the sill, looking out over Lestallum, or so it seems. Her eyes are closed. He blinks, exhausted, and staggers over to the bed, dragging his shirt over his head.

She opens her eyes and turns to him, waiting. He opens his mouth to ask why she’s here, but can’t find his voice. Gentiana joins him on the bed and presses the back of her fingers to his cheek. Her hands are cold, a blessed relief after the endless oppressive heat of Lestallum, and the hole in his chest opens anew.

 _Where is he?_ He can hear the edge of begging in his voice, past caring.

_Safe._

_When will he come back?_ His voice cracks on the last word.

_When the light waxes full._

He wishes he hadn’t asked, but it’s too late. Something in him has already come unmoored. He goes up to the roof and lays down, trying to force the sobs back down his throat.

Vesper hops onto his chest and curls up, purring. Gladio gives up trying to dry his eyes on his bare arms, tries to imagine the stars instead. He used to be able to navigate by the night sky; his parents had shown him how. Now he’s lost both of them and the stars too and there’s nothing left to show him the way.

\---

It becomes something of a tradition for him to give out cake to the kids on Noctis’s birthday, even though he still keeps forgetting his own.

Iris finds him out there, and sits on the step beside him wordlessly. It’s the first time he takes a slice for himself, and they sit and eat in silence, and forgive each other.

\---

One night, he ends up on the floor with Prompto, looking through photos. It feels like a lifetime ago. There are a decent number of them printed, some of them dogeared enough that Gladio suspects Prompto has been carrying them around with him everywhere. The room is quiet, save for the occasional laboured breath, the edge of tears.

There are only a few dozen since the train to Gralea. When Gladio asks, Prompto only shakes his head. _I feel like I shouldn’t._

He thinks about it for a moment, watching Prompto, then passes the camera back. _We’re alive, and we’re doing the best we can. I think that deserves to be recorded._ Prompto takes the camera and turns it over in his hands, stands, takes a picture of Gladio where he sits with the photos spread out around him.

\---

Talcott’s birthdays come and go too. Before any of them know it, there’s a sixteen year old standing in front of them, determined to join their ranks.

Gladio can never forget the boy waving from the Caem dock, calling, _Please come back, we need our king._

\---

Once in a while, Sania will ask them to gather samples for her while they’re out. They laugh about this sometimes, now that things are easier to bear, now that they’re used to the way things are.

Cor joins Gladio and Prompto one night, sitting around watching the kids play with Vesper, indulging in a rare coffee, while Prompto reminisces about frog hunts.

 _Don’t get too wistful,_ Gladio says, _you don’t want to wake up tomorrow on the hunt for a Hekaton Toad._

Prompto gasps, mock horror, hand to cheek. _How many tons?!_

The children call in chorus, _A HECK OF TONS!_

Cor chokes on a sip of coffee and Gladio laughs so hard that his breath wheezes out of his chest, as if he’s forgotten how it works.

\---

Gladio wakes abruptly, unable to tell if the thing that snapped him awake was from outside his head or in the dream. He turns and eases a hand forward until he finds what he’s looking for. Eric’s back is smooth under Gladio’s palm. If he turned on a light, he would be able to see freckles instead of scars.

It makes him feel old, the uneasy realisation that time is slipping away from him. He misses the seasons, he thinks dully, he misses the cold. It’s always too hot for bed sharing. He lays awake but doesn’t leave, not wanting to be the guy who disappears in the middle of the night.

\---

 _Iris the daemon slayer_ , Gladio says, a little awed. _That’s some reputation._

Ignis sits next to him, flipping his dagger idly. _Speaking of reputations,_ he says, _are you aware of yours?_

Gladio shakes his head, still forgetting that Ignis can’t see. _No?_

 _I’m just worried about you._ He looks a little like he regrets bringing it up. _You’ve been sleeping around an awful lot…_

Gladio splutters. _I have not! Well, I mean I have. But…_ He grumbles and clears his throat, checks feeling hot. _Fine, if we’re talking about this, how long have you been seeing Aranea?_

_You know I’m not inclined to romantic relationships._

_Yeah, that’s not exactly what I asked._ He is duly rewarded with the sight of Ignis flushing faintly and rolling his eyes. Gladio chuckles smugly. _I knew it._

_Yes, yes, well done. So, what about you?_

_I just…don’t see a reason to say no. It’s just nice. Comforting._ And then, a little defensively. _I don’t see what’s so bad about it._

_There’s nothing bad about it, but I know you. You get emotionally invested. I’m just concerned about you, that’s all._

Gladio doesn’t know what to say to that.

\---

The next time he sees Iris she looks worn to the bone. He can’t resist a little quip, missing some good natured teasing. _Daemon slaying not all you dreamed it would be?_

He’s horrified when she bursts into tears, can almost feel his father’s disapproving glare. He draws her towards a bench and apologises, tells her he didn’t mean it, but she shakes her head.

In halting, sobbing sentences she confesses that a couple of months ago she had thought that she was pregnant. She hadn’t been, and of course she was glad, is still glad. Except now she can’t stop thinking about it, about what their lives might be like if they were in Insomnia, how much she misses their old lives, their dad, the daylight. How much she wishes they could just go home.

Gladio listens and lets her cry into his shirt, feeling wretched, until the sobs ease into the occasional helpless hitched breath. _I keep thinking,_ she whispers eventually, _if I had a boy, I could name him after Dad._

_Could still if it was a girl._

_…like Clara?_

_Mhmm. Or Clarissa._

_That’s pretty._

_It is._

_Is it…something you think about?_

_No,_ he lies.

_Gladio._

_Hush now,_ he says, putting her head down on his lap. _Get some sleep._

\---

Gladio likes to watch Ignis cook, his fingers moving almost as gracefully as they had before. Sometimes he likes to pretend nothing has changed, in themselves, in the world. Sometimes Ignis will tell him to do this or that and Gladio will smile as he does it.

He sits in a comfortable slouch over the worktop in Takka’s, chin on folded arms, mesmerised by the motion of the knife in Ignis’s hands. _I’m sorry I was an asshole to Noct after Altissia. And to you._

Ignis pauses and his hand finds Gladio’s shoulder, slides up the back of his neck. _Took you long enough._

\---

It takes him by surprise. He think he’s been imagining it, had convinced himself that summoning his blade hadn’t been getting easier, that he was only getting used to it.

Then one night it comes to his hand like lightning, like light, and with it all his old strength and joy for the fight. When it’s over he falls to his knees, spilling over with relief, feeling whole again for the first time in a decade.

_Noctis._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Afterglow by Troy Baker
> 
> Fun fact: I have been trying to get this fic written for nearly a year.
> 
> You can find me at amovingtarget.tumblr if you'd like to say hello.


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